The War in Europe and D-Day

The War's Voices:

Broadcast and Commercial Recordings of Speeches and Interviews of World War II-era Personalities.

Winning the Home Front:

War-related Entertainment, Propaganda, and Ads Targeting World War II-era Radio Listeners.

G.I. Jive:

Popular and Topical Songs of World War II.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys:

USO Shows, Armed Forces Radio, V-Discs, and Other Morale Efforts Targeting the Military.

We Interrupt This Program:

War Reports, News Flashes, and Informational Programs Regarding World War II.

Now Hear This:

World War II-era Broadcast and Recording Technology.

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Now Hear This

The technology used to wage war around the globe was awe-inspiring, but equally amazing were the advances in broadcasting that transported these events from battlefront to living room. Through short wave transmissions, new recording devices, smaller portable transmitters, and other tools, Americans experienced the news, whether originating in a busy newsroom or on a frantic beachhead, as never before.

The six radio broadcasts presented here come from original studio transcription disc recordings in the Arthur B. Church - KMBC Radio Collection in the Marr Sound Archives.

Broadcast #1
News of the D-Day invasion was dramatic, but spotty, and broadcasters scrambled to fill the gaps between European dispatches and official announcements. This broadcast, at about 6:00 a.m. Eastern War Time, June 6, 1944, finds announcer Bob Trout in Columbia's New York newsroom improvising his way through this "busy night of broadcasting."

Broadcast #2
The world first learned of D-Day, ironically, at 12:37 a.m. Eastern War Time from the official Nazi news agency Trans-Ocean. Monitored by Allied intelligence, this and subsequent German reports were the only acknowledgement that the invasion was underway until the first official Allied communiqué was released at 3:32 a.m. This broadcast from the CBS newsroom offers a chronology of the day's announcements.

Broadcast #3
Most eyewitness accounts from the World War II era were either news reports read in the studio after returning from the field, or recordings made in the field and sent back for later broadcast. Though lacking the immediacy of today's on-the-spot coverage, these reports more than compensate in descriptive drama, as is evidenced by this first eyewitness account of the D-Day naval assault filed by correspondent Stanley Richardson.

Broadcast #4
A real-time broadcast from the field was relatively new technology during the war, and worthy of a special-broadcast interruption. This June 14, 1944, report from "somewhere in France," introduced by Edward R. Murrow in London, was the first broadcast attempt from French soil.

Broadcast #5
The cumbersome recording equipment of the war era made frontline reporting not only difficult, but also dangerous. Using a heavy, low-fidelity wire recorder, Columbia's Richard C. Hottelet made this eyewitness recording during a battle in Aachen, Germany, which aired on the network's "The World Today" news program on October 16, 1944.

Broadcast #6
Just as it had announced the beginning of the end with its D-Day coverage, German radio also signaled the final collapse nearly a year later. Monitored by Allied intelligence and reported on Columbia's May 3, 1945, edition of "The World Today," German Minister of Armaments Albert Speer acknowledged Germany's defeat just days before the Allied victory in Europe.

Text by Scott O'Kelley, Marr Sound Archives
Digital Audio by Scott Middleton, Marr Sound Archives

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